Todd Terry
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COW Coin
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Hadn’t seen that particular plate, Mark… lot of possibilities with that one, too.
“Harbor Freight. ‘Chicago Tools’ is Chinese for ‘One Use.'”
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I don’t know if there is really a name for that phenomenon.
My best guess is that the samples that you see which present this distortion are ones that were shot with anamorphic lenses, whereas the ones that seem clean were shot with spherical lenses.
If you have a particular example of an existing film, you can likely go and look it up on IMDB and the tech specs might tell you if it was shot anamorphic or not.
The other clue is bokeh, look at out-of-focus distant highlights and light sources in deep background…. if they are round, spherical lenses were used. If they are oval shapes, those were anamorphic lenses.
I don’t know for sure if this issue was caused by anamorphic lenses in the particular cases you’ve seen, but it’s a good guess. Anamorphic lenses do distort much more easily than spherical lenses.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I honestly don’t remember all the particulars, Larrin… that was a decision made 15 years ago.
I doubt it was price… it was probably because the Standard is literally twice the weight of the Traveller, and while the Traveller is a little bit shorter, it still gives more than enough reach for my usual needs. In fact I usually don’t even telescope it all the way out. Rarely, even.
Mine has worked like a champ all those years. I’ve only had two repairs, and they were minor. One of the locking levers, I did have to re-thread the hole (easily done myself), and I did have to replace one of the telescoping collars once (about a 50 buck part, if I recall). One good thing is that the Porta-Jib company (which is actually Hollywood General Machining) is a tiny little company, you can call and talk to Mark there who knows literally every little part of every product they make.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well I think you have to ask yourself (and decide) if you are taking any sort of field producer’s role in this project, or the client considers you just a “do what we ask” hired gun that is not looking for any creative input.
If it’s the latter… ask their questions, get the answers as best you can, move on, and cash the check.
But if they are expecting a more active role from you as a field producer… then yes, a dozen pages of questions is asinine.
In a previous life I was a television news reporter for quite a few years (people who know me in my present baseball-cap-and-Hawaiian-shirt life find it hard to believe I used to have a closet full of Brooks Brothers suits, but it’s true). It doesn’t take doing that very long before realizing you can’t go in with a long set of prepared questions and expect to get good television. An interview is a conversation, a flowing living thing where one answer might completely derail all your subsequent planned questions and spark a set of completely new ones. It’s a journey, and one where you don’t know the destination when you begin… it’s one you have to travel and find out where it goes. Unless you are talking about something like a legal deposition where you have to ask questions “A” through “J” and have to ask them in that order and in that exact wording, then that’s certainly no way to conduct an interview.
But I’m sure you know that.
In my opinion, the king of the on-camera interview… Dateline NBC’s Keith Morrison. He’s so brilliant, crafting questions that turn even tough interviews into soundbite machines (he’s an unbelievably good writer, too).
I also feel for ya with the hard-of-hearing issue. Our city is/was home to Wernher von Braun’s German rocket team. Those old guys are dying off fast (of those left, I think the average age is about 100), and people are always coming in to interview them while they can. We’ve shot a few for outside producers. I remember one gal from California who came in to interview one of them, Ernst Stuhlinger. Poor old Dr. Stuhlinger was deaf as a post by then, and this reporter had a soft thin little mousy voice. He couldn’t understand a word she said. She would ask these long complicated questions, and he’d lean in and in his thick German accent say “I don’t understand.” She’d ask again, not louder, but rephrasing the question. I was just a hired shooter but I finally took the reporter aside and told her “It’s not that the doesn’t comprehend the question… this guy put men on the moon. He just can’t HEAR you.” I don’t think she ever quite got it, though.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hadn’t heard of Trackfinger before the couple of mentions in this thread… it does look pretty cool. Cheap, too.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Thanks Rick… that’s old stuff that I had almost forgotten about. Digging it up though did spark a new interest in getting a couple of dummy iPads and painting them. No doubt the need will come up again…
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Making sure I understand correctly…
You want an iPhone, screen displaying green for key insertion later, but you also want to be able to touch the screen? Is that right?
If so, that should be pretty easy. I’ve not done it with an iPhone, but I’ve done it with a number of Android phones and several iPads. If no one has to touch them we’ve simply displayed a green screen.
But, in instances when they DID need to be touched… the devices we used weren’t even on. We attached an exact-sized piece of chroma-green paper to the screens.
That’s what did with all the tablets and phones in these two spots.
https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/news088.html
https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/news078.htmlActually displaying a green screen DOES have some advantages, especially for interiors because they are obviously basically “self lighting.” For exteriors though, adding a paper (or otherwise) green screen is much easier… you don’t have illumination issues since screens aren’t really that bright, and there are no reflections to contend with.
There seemed to be a period of time where we were having to do this with iPads fairly frequently… I found on eBay those non-functioning store-display iPads for about $15 each… I intended to buy a couple and just actually paint the screens green, but never got around to it. I’ve never looked, but you can probably buy non-functioning iPhones cheaply as well.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Sebastiaan Knoops] “What are your biggest annoyances when renting equipment?”
We don’t have to rent too often, but every now and then we do, usually supplemental HMIs when we have something bigger than we can cover with our own instruments.
Biggest pet peeve would be gear that is poorly maintained, or in need of repair (but is sent out for rental anyway). Here we have two choices… one is a big rental house and their gear is always in top shape. But their prices are sky high. The other choice is a small outfit, and often I’ll find something that needs fixing, tightening, or replacing on their gear (a loose bolt here, a missing nut there, the wrong kind of receiver on a yoke, something missing or bent, etc.). But their prices are dirt cheap. So it’s a tradeoff.
You’ll have to stay on top of that. Having been on both sides of the news-crew fence I can attest to the fact that no one is rougher on gear than ENG crews. Maybe a building demolition team, but that’d be about it.
The only other pet peeve is when I need something that is not available. The main rental house we use is a huge (huge) lighting company… but they mostly cater to stage productions (touring Broadway shows, arena rock concerts, etc.), and very little for film… so their HMI inventory is very limited (I think they only have six instruments). It’s not unusual to call to book something and everything they have is out.
It’s really helpful when you find a rental house that really goes above and beyond. There’s a camera rental house in Nashville (100 miles north of me) that gets my highest marks for that. Before we bit the bullet and bought our own lenses we used to frequently rent a superspeed primes set from them. They were always super helpful, one phone call and a couple of hours later the lenses would be waiting for me a block away from our studio at the bus station. It always dumbfounded me that they were willing to put $120K worth of glass on a Greyhound bus (even more surprising since it was a small case that even had a handle on it to make stealing it extra easy), but they did, over and over again. Highest marks from me for customer service.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, the product description in the second link specifically says that filter “may be cut and trimmed to fit any Par can or Brick style LED lighting fixture.”
Am I reading the post wrong, or isn’t that exactly what you are looking for?
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Magda Olszewski] “might you recommend that I try to have the SD fixed? Is it worth it?”
Doubt it would ever be worth it, you’d spend far more on repairs than it is worth if you could find someone willing to tackle it. Working SD100s can be found on eBay starting in the $20-25 neighborhood, a near mint one for less than $200. Someone has a lot of four of them (for parts) for only $12.
Considering these have water damage, that means electronics… which would be among the most expensive things to repair, if possible.
If you love that camera/model, you’d be far better off just buying another good working used one.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
